A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.
Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.
They're polar opposites.
In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they're living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer's block.
Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She'll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he'll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.
This book was just okay, I definitely can't say I loved it as much as others. There was a disconnect for me that I can't quite put into words. I think it was the mixture of a rom-com with serious topics, such as infidelity and cults that felt wrong to me. If a book is sold as a rom-com I want it to feel entertaining and somewhat light-hearted. Also, and this will be a spoiler, I have a pet peeve in books when a character is upset about something, in this book, marital infidelity. Yet when January learned that Gus was married, she continued to pursue a relationship with him solely taking his word that the relationship was over. It felt hypocritical. Overall, it just wasn't the book for me, but it was smart and well-written.
* I received this book from the author/publisher in exchange for an honest review *
